The Box Plus

Case Study:Dynamic Ad Replacement for The Box Plus

THE CHALLENGE

Box TV is the UK's #1 Music TV Network and offers a full spectrum of music TV genres across eight world famous digital channels: The Box, 4Music, Kiss, Magic, Smash Hits, heat, Kerrang! and The Box Africa. It broadcasts its channels to the UK and international markets with a focus on Africa and Europe targeting 16 to 34 year old viewers. The UK channels are available on cable, satellite and free-to-air digital terrestrial as well as via internet-delivered TV simulcast, online and mobile players to connected PCs, tablets and smartphones.

When launching its online and mobile TV offering, the challenge was to find ways to engage with its connected audience, and stay relevant particularly to the younger 16-24 year old audience. Box TV’s music channels differentiate themselves from a-la-carte on-demand music playlist services, through packaged and editorialised content, something that is core to its heritage as a network of trusted music brands.

Post launch, a key business requirement was to optimise its simulcast ad-funded monetisation model, by introducing new digital advertising opportunities. “Originally, we launched the online player with two non-skippable pre-roll ads before each stream,” said Julie Wright, Box TV’s Commercial and Business Development Director. “Viewers were comfortable with this, and it brings revenue opportunities. But we wanted to explore innovative and more integrated digital advertising options.”

Dynamic Advertisement Replacement

The critical element of the Yospace approach is that it frame-accurately switches content before delivery to the end user’s device, thanks to integration with the broadcast playout automation. The result is that the replacement is seamless, whatever the delivery platform: viewers do not realise that the advertising is replaced.

The replacement advertising can use all of the functionality of the online platform, for example many of the online ads are clickable. Dynamic content replacement can be set at the platform level or it can be even more granular, potentially down to tailoring advertising to individual viewers.

“Digital platforms are interesting because of the one-to-one connection with the viewer,” Wright said. “We first met Yospace in 2012 and saw that they could deliver a better experience. Using their technology we could make the advertising more relevant to each of the viewers watching at the time.”

“If the advertising is more relevant, then the overall channel experience is more relevant.”

"If the advertising is more relevant, then the overall channel experience is more relevant."

Julie Wright, Commercial and Business Development Director, Box TV

IMPLEMENTATION

Technically, the Yospace solution has a relatively small footprint at the broadcaster, where it integrates with the broadcast playout system and with the advertising sales platform: Tremor Video in the case of Box TV. Most of the processing is in the Yospace cloud, which also handles content delivery.

Yospace interrogates the broadcast playout system for details on upcoming commercial breaks, then plans the dynamic replacement of advertising for each platform and viewer. Because the content is switched in the cloud, the end user’s device sees only a continuous stream of content so there is no potential for disruption, nor a need for player-based ad fetching with the associated overhead in terms of bandwidth.

“We chose Yospace because they had proven experience in delivering smooth, real-time performance,” according to Julie Wright. “The technical architecture is powerful, and they understand what a broadcaster needs.”

"We chose Yospace because they had proven experience in delivering smooth, real-time performance."

Julie Wright, Commercial and Business Development Director, Box TV

RESULTS

“Dynamic Ad Replacement gives the advertiser the opportunity to plan on different platforms,” Wright explained. “Our advertisers know our viewers are not watching less television, instead they are doing so through more touch points and platforms.”

“Through traditional broadcast we are attracting 14 to 15 million viewers a month in the UK,” she continued. “Broadcast TV is very powerful, but now we are developing our connected experience to increase our reach potential. Online viewing is still small, but growing. Since we replaced pre-rolls with dynamic ad insertion, our ad impressions have tripled, and digital platforms also allow us to measure how long a viewer will stick with an ad.”

“We are now seeing view-through rates of 96%. That is a good 15 or 20% higher than conventional digital advertising. It is clear that dynamic replacement helps make the viewer stick with the advertising. The ultimate result is a four-fold increase in online ad revenues.”

Box TV is a pioneer in dynamic online advertising replacement, and is developing new business models around it. They see it as a tremendous opportunity. The ad clickability feature adds another level of interaction and makes the engagement opportunity with the advertised product. Ads can be currently targeted by platform (iOS, Android, app, web) and TV channel (choice of 7).

“With such technology now in place, our aim is to develop scale,” according to Wright. “In the future we will look to deliver specific audience segments to advertisers.

She concluded. “Dynamic Advertising Replacement helps us deliver a better product and ultimately be more competitive.”

"We are now seeing view-through rates of 96%. That is a good 15 or 20% higher than conventional digital advertising."